the 52 weeks: winter and spring meatless pastas

I’m calling this a pasta for the winter because of the spaghetti squash, but you should be able to find it as early as fall and possibly into spring. I know up here in Pittsburgh it didn’t appear in my grocery store until January/February, though, and was gone soon after. I had never even tried spaghetti squash before this and am not a huge fan of yellow summer squash, but I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t taste anything like summer squash. And I like that this recipe still includes actual spaghetti, too, so it’s not as overwhelming.

I found it was super helpful to microwave the squash for 3-5 minutes before trying to cut it in half. The recipe doesn’t tell you, but you can remove the seeds by scooping them out with a spoon. You can scrape a lot of the strings out with a spoon or fork as well, but probably need to use your hands as well. Here’s the Youtube video I watched to learn these things!

For anyone who doesn’t like olives, I left them out and it still tasted great. This recipe is labeled as a “pantry raid” in the BHG mag because it uses things you might have leftover in your pantry. This is usually never true for me, but I did happen to have the golden raisins because I used them in an amazing salmon recipe I’ll post later! They’re also good just plain, so if you like raisins, don’t leave them out! Overall, I thought this recipe was very easy and pretty cheap, too. Here it is on our table!

This meal is cooked differently – pretty much all on the skillet, other than the pasta itself – but has similar ingredients. I left the olives out of this one too, and it was still full of flavor! We actually started eating before remembering to sprinkle on the parmesan cheese, and it was really good without it! Of course even beter with it…

We used more than 4 oz. of pasta and it was hard to get 4 full servings out of it, so I would recommend using at least 6 oz. of pasta or more.

I thought the lemons in the picture above were slices of squash before I looked at the recipe, and was really unsure about the instructions to “pass with lemon wedges, if desired.” I saw last minute in my magazine that it suggests caramelizing the lemons, so we did that really quickly and tossed them with the pasta. They went well with everything and weren’t too sour – just don’t take a big bite of one!

You really have to prepare the ingredients in advance for this one because you have less than 4 minutes to get everything cooked in the skillet once you start. Other than that, it’s super easy! Here’s ours…